Visiting China ?

GREETING

A smile and nod of the head is the typical way to greet or acknowledge someone you know. In more formal situations, people normally shake hands. Chinese people generally don’t kiss or hug each other overmuch unless they know each other very well.

Remember to smile a lot. Smiling is important. Even if you don’t feel like it. The Chinese smile all the time, which doesn’t necessarily mean they are warming to you or like you particularly... It’s their standard behaviour. On the other hand not smiling may appear unfriendly.

NAMES

The Chinese put the family name first e.g. Deng Xiaoping’s family name is Deng.

Chinese people often address each other with a professional title. In English the title comes first, in Chinese the family name comes before the title:

        Professor Einstein     Einstein jiàoshòu

        Dr Who                      Who bóshì

        Queen Elisabeth        Elisabeth nüwáng

        President Obama      Obama z ôngtông

Here are some more professional titles:

        engineer     gōngchéngshī  (shortened to ‘gōng’ when addressing people)
        doctor         yīshēng
        lawyer         lüshī
        manager     jīnglī

In formal situations, people are introduced as ‘Mr’ (xiānshēng), ‘Miss’ (xiüojíe) or ‘Ms’ (nüshì). Chinese people don’t normally address a female as ‘Mrs’ (tàitai) unless she is with her husband. A married woman does not take the name of her husband.

More informal and familiar - at work or socially - address people as follows:

‘Xiâo’ + family name if he/she is younger than you,  e.g. “Xiâo Lî”

or ‘Lâo’ + family name if he/she is older or more senior,  e.g. “Lâo Wáng”.

FOOD

You can find all kinds of vegetables, meat, fruit and seafood served in China. Purely vegetarian food is not so easy to find – except in a Buddhist temple.

People in the north of China prefer noodle and wheat-flour-based food, while in the south are more rice-based dishes. The most common Chinese dish is a stir-fry with either rice or noodles. Rice or noodles tend to come separately at the end of the meat or vegetable dish.

Where a group are eating together dishes are shared. Some dishes are not easy to identify, so try a little bit first. There is usually plenty of variety: pork, chicken, beef, fish, duck and fresh vegetables.

Breakfast is eaten before the working day starts: between 6.30 and 9.00am. Lunch is around midday and dinner from 6.30pm onwards. Chinese businesses often take a longish lunch break – about 2 hours.

Tips are not expected in restaurants, taxis, hotels, etc. If you find yourself working in a hotel or restaurant note that accepting tips will be positively discouraged.

Avoid drinking tap water – either boil it first as the Chinese do or where possible stick to bottled water.

MEDICAL SERVICES

Arrange travel insurance before leaving for China: medical services are not free. In big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai there are hospitals where English is spoken, but in smaller cities medical staff may not speak English so well.

Bring your own essential first aid support and painkillers. Paracetamol and Lemsips and similar are available in bigger cities in the joint-venture supermarkets.

SHOPS

Shops normally do not open until around ten o’clock, and usually stay open until late in the evening. Most people do their shopping after work. All shopkeepers are prepared to negotiate on price (except the larger supermarkets and department stores). You can barter down to half the price in some cases …

NOTE ALSO …

It is a very good idea to obtain full travel and medical insurance before you travel. Some of the medical issues in China include:

• Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) - The risk to humans is believed to be low, but it remains advisable to avoid live animal markets, poultry farms and other areas where you might come into contact with infected poultry.
• Rabies - China has over a thousand cases of human rabies every year.

And in case you were wondering …

• drug offences are severely penalised, in some cases with the death penalty.
• certain religious activities are restricted, including preaching and the distribution of religious materials.

Entry Requirements

As a British national you will require a visa to enter any part of China except Hong Kong. Visas cannot be obtained on arrival and fines may be charged for overstaying a permit: so check your visa is in order for the full duration of your stay.

These notes are a general guide only. The information is believed to be correct at the time of going to print. Lingua (UK) cannot be held liable for the accuracy of information given.

A brief look at the Chinese language

THE CHINESE script is demanding, and fluency requires many years of diligent study. There are reckoned to be some 40,000 characters in existence, but the number of 'words' needed to read a newspaper is roughly 3,000. Chinese characters are often called 'pictograms', but only a small number are actually pictures of things. Most characters are composed of two parts; the 'radical', which gives a general indication of the meaning (e.g. the characters for foal, stallion and piebald all contain the 'radical' - horse), and the 'phonetic' which gives an indication of the sound.

The Chinese script was standardised by the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-209 BC), who was also responsible for the Terracotta army and the Great Wall of China. Apart from characters which  were introduced in the last 100 years to describe chemical elements, hardly any new characters have been invented in the last 2,000. Modern discoveries and inventions are rendered in existing characters, and the Latin or Greek root of an English word is often translated directly. For example, dinosaur, from deinos - terrible, sauros - lizard in Greek becomes terror dragon in Chinese (kǒng lóng).

While the Chinese script is the preserve of the serious enthusiast, spoken Chinese is much more accessible and the rewards for even a small amount of study are high. There are six main dialects, which vary greatly; but Mandarin, as the official language, is the one most Chinese are able to speak and understand. It is spoken by all Chinese people in Taiwan, Singapore and mainland China. It is now also spoken in Hong Kong – particularly in formal circles.

Many people are put off by the idea of tones, and they do take a bit of getting used to. Mandarin has four, which means that any one syllable, 'ma' for example, can be pronounced in four different ways to mean four different things. Once you are familiar with the sounds of the language, however, you can appreciate the advantage of Chinese: no grammar! Well, no more than is strictly necessary. Forget genders, cases, plurals, tenses. Spoken Chinese is language stripped down to the bare essentials, and can be learned very quickly. A little goes a very long way and makes business and travel in China far more  successful and sociable.